


Seeing the Invisible

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Hold the Fort: Pictures of Hogwarts During the Year of the Carrows [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6831811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has always had the ability to see things that noone else could see.</p><p>Two moments in the life of Argus Filch. Or: The effects of unexpected kindness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing the Invisible

He hears her incessant humming and skipping from way down the corridor, and he’s already annoyed by the time there’s a knock on his door.

What did the little brat want? Already he cleans up their messes when their spells—abilities they couldn’t even begin to appreciate, privileged little buggers—go awry, mops up their vomit when they’ve been sick, or when they’ve hexed each other. At the beginning of _this_ year, he’d had to practically follow the Weasley brat around because his petty schoolboy antics had him mewling slugs all over the place. Couldn’t they give him _some_ peace and quiet?

“It’s almost Christmas. They’ll be out of our hair soon, my swe—” He stops short as he turns to the leg of the desk where his cat normally curls and sees nothing, remembering abruptly that she’s not there. When they find the brat who petrified her…Why, he may not be able to cast that deadly green light, but he’ll wring the brat’s neck himself.

There’s another knock at his door. “Mr. Filch?”

He grunts in response.

The door opens to reveal a tiny girl with knotty blonde hair, her blue and bronze tie askew on her neck. She is carrying a package tied with a bow that he recognizes as being from that blasted Honeydukes store in the village. (How many times has he had to scrape their caramels off from under the desks? How many times has he had to chase after some of their hopping monstrosities of melting chocolate, that always leave a mess?) 

To his shock, the girl extends the package to him. “Happy Christmas, Mr. Filch!”

He raises an eyebrow, too stunned to respond or move to take it.

“It’s alright, sir!” says the girl brightly. “It’s a variety pack! I wasn’t sure what you liked, see, but Honeydukes are really lovely, they do gift boxes and things. I’ve never been myself, I’m too young to go into the village, but one of the older students in my House told me. I asked her to buy one for me so that I could give it to you!”

He takes the package that she’s extending toward him and examines it carefully. Under the ribbon, there’s a carefully written note, wishing him a Happy Christmas and signed by “Luna.” It’s a prank, surely. Something cleverly disguised as a treat that will make him ill when he eats it. But he thinks, not even one of these nitwits would be stupid enough to hand deliver a prank to him with a signed note, particularly not one of ‘em in the so-called house of the “wise.” Surely, she’d know that once he ate it and got ill, he’d come after her after the holiday…But none of these little whelps has ever given him a genuine Christmas gift, and he can see no reason why any of them would start now. 

The girl— _Luna_ , he supposes—gives no indication that she realizes that he’s troubled, but her face darkens slightly. “Also,” she says. “I’m sorry about your cat, sir.” 

Ah- _ha_! This explains everything, he thinks. It was _her_! Luna Petrified his cat and now is feeling guilty about it, so she’d brought him some sweets hoping to butter him up and deflect suspicion. Well, despite what the students think of him, he is no imbecile. He opens his mouth to tell her as much, to say that he’s going to drag her to the Headmaster right now, never mind that she looks younger than the Potter brat, and that the Headmaster had said that no one that young could’ve petrified his sweet…It was her…it _had_ to be, he knows it…But then the girl continues: “I know what it’s like to lose the people you care about, to not have ‘em with you all of a sudden. I miss my mum all the time.”

Well, it’s not as though _she’s_ the only one to have lost people, is it? He’s lost of plenty of people, even before Mrs. Norris...And then he realizes with a start that she referred to Mrs. Norris as a person. He blinks, breathes, unsure what to do with this information. If she can understand what his cat means to him, and she knows what loss is, surely she wouldn’t inflict it...but then, who did…and _why_ would she give him a Christmas gift?

“But not to worry! I’m sure she’ll be alright!” says the girl. “They say that people who are Petrified will be totally fine once they’re given Mandrake draught. And Professor Sprout is growing some Mandrakes right now!”

She looks at him for another moment, and when he doesn’t respond, she says, “Well, I should go back to my Common Room before curfew. Happy Christmas, Mr. Filch.” And then, to his immense surprise, she stands on her tiptoes, and kisses his cheek.

Her lips feel warm, foreign on his skin. He places a hand there, and keeps it there after she is gone, blinking and starting at the unexpected, novel kindness.

* * *

The castle is a mess, and if he survives this, he might just die trying to clean it all up. And it’s not just the blood (and there is blood _so much blood_ all over the place—there has been all year. He should know—he is the one who has had to clean it. His hands, his clothes, his very skin, all stink of blood and he doesn’t think they ever won’t. As much as he’s threatened students to use the old methods of punishment, seeing them enacted—having to _clean up_ after them—has made him retch), but it’s not just the blood now. There’s spring mud too, and bodies sprawled all around the school. And the castle itself is crumbling. Turning into debris and rubble, after all he has put into it. After thirty years of taking care of this school, after thirty years scrubbing on his hands and knees, of sweeping, and polishing, and pouring breath, and soul into it—all the physical and loving labor that _they_ who can do anything they want in an instant by waving a stick can’t understand— _they_ come and destroy it all in a matter of hours.

He _hates_ magic.

Standing in the corridor, blasts of light whizz around him from all sides, none of which are aimed at him, and none of which hit him. He supposes he should be thankful that there are none of their deadly green lights or painful red bursts to threaten him—he is, he knows, not for the first time, unseen, invisible to these people, indistinguishable from the castle itself, even as they thoughtlessly destroy that.

This is not his fight. Not a fight for him, who has no wand, has none of that energy welling inside him to create those bursts of light. He should crawl back to his closet with his cat, hug her and wait for this all to be over. When they win—whichever group of ‘em wins—they will still need a cleaner, and he will still be here. Whoever wins, it will be incumbent on him to put the castle back together again—what does he care which wizard is in charge of it?

This might be his home, but this is not, has never been, his world.

He is just about to head back to his office, to wait out the destruction and croon to Mrs. Norris, when he sees _her_ out of the corner of his eye, dressed in bright colors that stand out when compared to the others in their black school-robes, or black Death Eater robes, or all of their dark, dirty, ratted sweaters. She is dueling, waving that stick around in ways incomprehensible to him, muttering things under her breath, her blonde brows furrowed in concentration as she produces lights and force-fields to counter the wizard hurling balls of light at her. And she seems to be doing well as far as he can tell, to be holding her own against the man…

And then, as he stands watching, another man appears next to him, out of the girl’s line of sight. Filch watches as he pulls back his wand to aim toward her, listens as he begins to utter: “ _Avada Ka_ —”

This is not his world, but he’s lived in it long enough to know what those words mean. 

When he moves, suddenly, he doesn’t think of what he’s doing; he thinks only of the six notes he has safe in a drawer in his desk wishing him a Happy Christmas and signed _Luna Lovegood_ , of the warm kisses on his cheek, of the hellos and words of thanks in the corridors. And then there is a thud as the wizard beside him, who never finished the incantation, falls to the ground, blood pouring out from the dent in the back of his head. It is the exact same shade of red as the blood on the brick in Filch’s hand, pulled quickly from the rubble at his feet. 

He lets the brick fall, and the noise it makes causes the girl to look up at him. She doesn’t smile, not now, but she, who has always seen things no one else has, gazes at him and at the body at his feet for a moment, then nods at him gratefully before returning to her duel. 

He nods in return, even though she is no longer looking. This isn’t his fight, this isn’t his world, but this is his home. He may not have magic, but he is part of the castle and the castle is still here, even if wounded, and the castle has always taken care of its own. And he is its caretaker, so he will take care, and maybe he will see her on the other side of all of this. 

He hopes that he will.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
